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The Will to Adorn App

The Smithsonian’s “The Will to Adorn” app is designed to collect your stories about the choices you make everyday when you dress for school, work, fun, or special occasions. With this app, anyone can share experiences about personal and community dress styles. After you share your stories, be sure to listen to those recorded by other users.

Everyone is a dress artist. We announce our identities to the world by crafting our everyday personal appearance. With the resources at hand, we “curate” our styles according to the image we have of ourselves, as well as our ideas of how to dress appropriately.

Join our research! Record your answers to questions about the way you dress. When you’re done recording, you have the opportunity to upload photos to add to your story.

The Smithsonian wants to hear your sartorial stories!

Help us document the sartorial (style) splendor that exists in the diversity of the American experience. Selected stories from the application will be featured on the Smithsonian’s The Will to Adorn website.

The Will to Adorn: African American Dress and the Aesthetics of Identity is a multi-year, collaborative folk cultural research and public presentation project based at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Learn more about the project here.